the burning in his mind
by a-hint-of-garlic
Summary: The stag follows Will everywhere nowadays, but at least Hannibal is real.


The dead eyes of Garret Jacob Hobbs stare at him from across the room. Will lays back on the cream-colored sheets in Hannibal's bedroom. The silk whispers against his naked skin while Hannibal settles between his spread legs. He is breathtaking and Will wonders what he wants with someone as broken has himself. Hannibal could have lovers who don't see dead people sitting in the corner of the room, and he almost says so when the other looks at him through the dim light.

"Are you sure you want this, Will?" he asks, and Will nods without hesitation. Maybe he had too much wine, but Hannibal's lips had felt like salvation when he tasted then earlier.

"Yes. Please... just... please," he stammers, not making eye-contact but eager all the same.

_Drown out the dead_, he doesn't say. Hannibal will understand; he always does.

They are both hard, have been since they finished dinner downstairs. Will shivers. He wants to know with certainty what is real, wants to separate hallucination from actual sensation.

(Hannibal is always real. Will has never encountered his bloody remains in a dream which makes him realer than anyone else Will can think of.)

Hobbs grins his unsettling grin.

"Killing me made you feel powerful. You are no different than me or any killer in who's head you went. You and me, we are the same."

(Hannibal leans down to press a kiss on the inside of Will's upper thigh and he lets himself sink further back into the mattress.)

Out in the hallway he hears the sound of hooves, slow and muffled by the carpet and Will just knows it is him. The stag follows him everywhere nowadays, why not into Hannibal's bedroom? Good things don't happen to him, after all.

(Hannibal presses a lube-slick finger into him and Will keens. Remember what is real, he tries to remember himself.)

Hobbs voice mixes with the dull clop-clop of hooves approaching the door.

(Will fists the sheets as Hannibal's cock enters him. It hurts more than he thought it would but that is okay because for a moment the only things he hears are Hannibal's breathing and his own blood pounding in his ears.)

Will squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a desperate, muffled sound as Hannibal starts fucking him in earnest. When he opens them again the stag has passed the open door, antlers dripping with fresh blood.

(Hannibal...)

"Hannibal..."

The stag lowers it's head, blood-red eyes fixed on the hallucination of Garret Jacob Hobbs, one hoof threateningly scratching the ground. Hobbs keeps grinning, staring at Will, even as the stag sprints forwards.

For s split second Will wonders how the animal even fits – Hannibal's bedroom is big, but not that big. The next moment he watches a dead man die and forgets every doubt about reality.

His antlers pierce through Hobbs' torso with a sick, wet crack that makes Wills stomach lurch with how satisfying it feels. He killed Hobbs once (loved killing him, a cynic little voice tells him) he can kill him again to make him disappear. It doesn't even bother him that it is the stag who rids him of the dead man haunting him. Choosing between two devils is easy sometimes.

(He claws into Hannibal's shoulders like the man is his lifeline. He is.)

The stag throws his head back and the body mounted on the sharp points of his antlers turn into someone else. Abigail's dead eyes stare into his very soul and suddenly he wants to throw up before the stag shakes his mighty head and the mutilated corps of the daughter he never had vanishes into thin air.

(Hannibal grabs his hips hard enough to instantly bruise. Will savors the feeling of being owned by someone better than him. Someone more in control of the world inside his own head and what of it seeps out into reality.)

The corpse is gone, but blood pools down the stags antlers to wet his thick pelt. The nightmarish animal steps closer, increasingly soaked in blood until Will can feel it breath down his neck and drops of sticky warm blood on his cheek.

(Hannibal reaches for his cock while Will clenches his legs tighter around the body above him. Hannibal is real, if only he remembers this simple truth he will be fine.)

The stag shakes his head to rid himself of the blood, spraying it everywhere in the process. Will knows his skin has become a canvas sprinkled with red and so is Hannibal when he looks up, mouth agape and tasting copper on his tongue.

Hannibal covered in blood is a thing of beauty and Will has no idea who this thought belongs to. To himself? Hobbs? The Chesapeake Ripper? It doesn't matter, not really.

(Hannibal bites his shoulder until he draws blood and it is enough to send Will over the edge, spurting hot come between them while crying out the other's name.)

Will tries to catch his breath, the blood on Hannibal's face flickering in and out of existence and he feels like crying.

He is missing something and couldn't care any less and that scares him.

The stag still looks at him while his own eyes flicker from Hannibal's lips to his cheek to his brow and back, always avoiding the eyes like he might get burned if he allowed to acknowledge their existence. Hannibal is the only real thing in the room and he will cling to him as long as the man will have him. He doesn't need to see his eyes to know the exact moment the other comes deep inside him anyway.

Hannibal licks the blood from Will's skin at the same time as the stag cleans imaginary blood from Hannibal's cheek.

There is something important, but he can't think straight. It is okay.

"You are safe, Will," he whispers, and just for a moment, he believes him. Even if the blood covered stag with his crimson eyes still breathes in his ear.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Thanks to DreammasterLoki on AO3 for beta reading.


End file.
